Passive smoking promotes school truancy …

7 years ago

When you smoke you are harming the health of your children … but also to how they fit into school life. This is shown in an American study of more than 3000 children aged 6 to 11 years. This is not new of course, parental smoking affects their children, ear infections, colds, cough are all reasons why truancy is more about the children of smokers.

“In 6-11 years, who live with smokers, between one quarter and one third of school absences was due to parental smoking,” said Douglas Levy of the Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston. Lead author of the study, he and his team asked a series of questions to parents 3087 young Americans:

– How many smokers live in the home?
– How many days the child had been absent due to illness?
– Is he had three or more ear infections during the year?
– Is he suffered from a cold or gastrointestinal illness in the last two weeks?
– Does he been diagnosed with asthma?

The authors diseases associated with passive smoking – hearing and colds in particular – have found themselves responsible for 24% of absenteeism among children living with a smoker. And not surprisingly, this proportion increased to 34% in small face to smoking from both parents!

“However, the impact on children’s health is certainly larger than the suggest the results of our study. Indeed, we are only interested in certain diseases due to passive smoking. We have not all taken into account, “said Levy.

Passive smoking is that “inhaling, so unintentional, smoke from one or more smokers.” In France, second-hand smoke causes the deaths of over 3000 people! Apart from the risk of death and lower respiratory tract infections (otitis media, asthma …), passive smoking increases a further 25% that of coronary events.